What are everyone's policy on visiting hours say on med surg? We have it 11am to 830pm everyday. It used to be if people stayed later as long as they were not loud and not bothering the neigbor we'd let it slide by. They ususally would stay 30min over then leave. And of course someone not doing well let them stay try to get a private room and almost any time a private room let them stay.
Anyway right now we are out of control now. The families know now they can stay past meaning just demand to stay we call the supervisor and they ok it. Now it's several members staying all the way to 10pm at night. If they were loud we get them to leave. Also one time a family member left his 3 year old with his sedated mother and left to get coffee and she was running all over and the mom a pt was totally out of it!!! What finally did it was a dying pt who had hoards of family like 6 that came in 2 people shifts that would ask questions constantly and if you didn't cover a glucose in 2 min since it was taken call you on it and literally i'd be walking down the hall to yes ANOTHER pt and they would yell not even my name NURSE NURSE NURSE what the heck am i suppose to do i wish i had the balls to ignore them but want to be polite. Then they ask ALL the staff the same question. Pt has nurses and lawyers for family. The pt is terminal and yet everything is being done. The staff is quite ticked at it all supervisor aware and the family is staying past visiting hours WAY late on cell phones. They also say goodnight then come back in an hour as if to CATCH you not doing something right. ONe held the phone toward my face as i was talking to the son facing it to us back and forth and it FINALLY clicked what the heck was going on. They are asking all these questions to several staff members and all different realatives wanting to personally know the info despite being told they need ONE contact person, watching everything: they are stocking on witnesses to sue us if anything happens. My coworker is like yeah they're going to close the unit so each of us could be called in as witnesses. Wow i'm really venting but it's ridiculous we can't do our job. I can't even see the pt it's the family period. The thing that kills is the people doing it are nurses too!!! I feel like we're being betrayed in a way and totally disrespected and above all this pt is being torturred!
What i'm finding out is we need a set policy to deal with this. See exceptions should be made. I'd just hate to force out exceptions for rare occasions but to prevent such out of control things we need to set some policy and stick by it. IN icu there is only several 15 min visits you can do. My mom was in icu for 3-4 months (crohns diease, kidney problems, 41 years old) and the nurses loved my dad. He would stay out of the way leave for certain procedures and was quiet. And it was just him. He'd let him do there job and they'd let him stay for 3 hours! See i find nothing wrong with that and he needed that and my mom too so it disgusts me that tha one family can ruin this but at the same time something needs to be done. Ok the one thing my father did make a comment was when a nurse pulled back on the ngt then put the residual back in! He's like THAT"s dirty!!! They explained it then he stayed back. And it was comment not stepping forward with several relatives armed with camera phones!!!
A doctor started complaining now. I asked the family to leave the relative said yeah he'd mind just came in from nyc so it's like ok understandable but you can't stay so long! Find out he was there for 45min. Oh and pt not severaly ill. Anyway now i'm sucked into a meeting by this one doctor's request to report this to the CEO IKES!!! I feel like i'm bakc in junior high but will do it to try and get something started!
Specializes in ER (new), Respitory/Med Surg floor.
IOne time she took the bipap off and complained the pulse ox was 82% came out and my manager was with me (GREAT) and we went in and of course my manager is like "why'd you take it off!"
ooops sorry at that time NOT bipap it was a NRB mask at THAT point.
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
This is one of the major reasons why I don't much like day shift. I'm constantly having to stumble over visitors to get to my patients, hang IVs, take vitals, do my assessments, give meds, check oxygen, even pass trays. Whatever makes people think you can fit two patients and all their equipment, ten visitors, and one or two nurses into a 10X12-foot room?! And why do they have to make so much noise??! A person has to be pretty doggone sick even to be admitted to a hospital these days.....this is not a time to party! :angryfire
Maybe all this makes me cranky because I'm old enough to remember when visitors were expected to observe visiting hours, to be quiet and respectful of the staff (and stay the #$&! out of the way when they needed to do something for the patient), and to leave children under 12 either at home or under adult supervision in the waiting room. A med/surg floor is NO place for young children.......too many ugly sights and smells, and they are dangerous to other patients and staff when they run up and down the halls.
Frankly, that's another reason I like floating to the ICU.......they are stricter about visitors and the NURSES are the ones who decide when, how many, and how long. :) Yesterday I had a critical patient on a Dopamine drip who'd just gotten back from a HIDA scan and was utterly exhausted, and I actually got to tell the crowd gathered around his bedside to leave so he could get some rest.........we're not permitted to do that out on the floor unless visitors are disruptive, it goes against 'customer service'. I was nice about it, of course, but I felt SO empowered........an hour or so later, when his BP crashed, I was really glad I didn't have to wade through 15 people in order to bump up the drip and get him into Trendelenburg!!
I had a pt the other day, a very nice elderly woman of 72, post appy, who was really worn out from her visitors. It got reported to me, and the pt volunteered the infomation also to me. She was the type of person who only wanted to say sweet and kind things to people. She was really pooped and it did stress her out.
Frankly, I think that for the good of the pt there should perhaps be some visitor policy. But on the other hand, some pts seem to thrive on visitors. I notice, in particular, with Hispanic pts that it seems to be a big communal experience when a family member is sick. So, there are cultural factors, also, in one's tolerance for lots of company.
But, ultimately, I do think that the pt should control his own healthcare experience, as long as he isn't infringing on the rights of his roomate.
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
Thanks yes great advise! The management did speak to them and it just kept happening and then the 3-11pm supervisor talked to them and tried a pt care rep to get involved. I would tell the one pt's relative not to touch and she needed o2. One time she took the bipap off and complained the pulse ox was 82% came out and my manager was with me (GREAT) and we went in and of course my manager is like "why'd you take it off!" then we explained why she needed yet kept doing it told an md got an order in the chart for the family not to touch anything then just documented. Maybe it's a combination of grief and desperation. She removed the o2 mask to do incentive spirometry she said. Oh boy. Yeah my note was so long. My management however has a bad habit of brushing things off that i'm seeing and i hate it. ex problems with other floors you tell the supervisor and it's "i know" but nothing done that i'm aware of. And outright lying about getting admissions when they say you won't and other things. I'm learning how to play the game of interacting with the supervisors. In some ways very frustrating but at least i know i'm trying to do the right thing. Thanks for all the good advice on this board it's so hard!
Couldn't resist answering you once more!!! The patient I told you about in the PM I sent you all took place in a community hospital where I was frustrated that they let stuff like this happen. But, then I went to work for a large city hospital and everything was different. We had a security button right next to every code blue button and we used it if we needed to. The security guards were licensed to carry firearms and they were all big, burly guys. You didn't fool around with them if they asked visitors to leave. We actually had to have them escort a patient to the hospital door because he was refusing to be discharged. Did they ever cover that situation in your nursing school? Every unit had its own social worker and if there was any hint of dissention among the family as to who was going to make decisions they went to court very quickly and filed for orders of guardianship often forcing the families to name a guardian.
I think of lot of what happens in different hospitals has a lot to do with how the upper administration is allowing things to be run.
I had to kind of laugh at mjlrn97's post about having to climb over visitors and equipment to get to the patients. I know exactly what you are talking about! It made me think that successful navigation through an obstacle course should be mandatory in nursing school. :chuckle
Specializes in ER (new), Respitory/Med Surg floor.
We have a couple security people but no firearms. Infact we just instituted a new no smoking policy if the pt is caught smoking get the security guy and the nurse and security go over paperwork stating how dangerous it is to smoke in the hosptal for themselves and other pts and explained the o2 in the walls that can explode if they smoke and that pt has to sign the document with the staff. It even says the pt may have to pay damages as well. The one pt who did this only laughed but anyway maybe it will help! Not to stereo type or anything but this one family just happened to be hispanic NO KIDDING had 15 relatives by a private room!!! You literally had to step over people sitting on the floor!!! I know one pt was actually a well respected dr was very polite and would not refuse visitors but the entire hosptal kept stopping to visit and we tried to limit visitors b/c he was too tired but too nice to not want to refuse.
As far as management being a huge problem i'm in the poconos and it was a very small rural area and we have a MASSIVE population up here now. We are trying to upgrade the hospital and I think that's a major factor we were set in certain ways and now we can't handle the huge population. People are sicker comming in and people d/c faster people in and out in and out, short staff. I'm making it sound worse than it is but our hospital can't handle the community need. I don't know how many times the icu/ccu have been totally filled. What happens during a code?!!!!
LOL, pts who smoke in the room aren't usually the most open to pt teaching. They tend to be on the, er, NON-COMPLIANT side of things, to put it nicely. . I love the ones who refuse a nicotine patch because they know they can't smoke for a period of time after taking it off.:angryfire . Smoking is so, glamorous...:chuckle
Specializes in ER (new), Respitory/Med Surg floor.
LOL, pts who smoke in the room aren't usually the most open to pt teaching. They tend to be on the, er, NON-COMPLIANT side of things, to put it nicely. . I love the ones who refuse a nicotine patch because they know they can't smoke for a period of time after taking it off.:angryfire . Smoking is so, glamorous...:chuckle
OMG!!! ONe pt i had wanted lidocaine before i started her iv and i wouldn't got a #20 gauge needle in her ac and she's like oh that didn't hurt! Then fliping out over not smoking. Got her a patch. Anyway her hg was like 5.6!!! So got some blood in. Found out the next day she was caught WITH her patch on smoking outside with her iv pump and PRBC influsing!!!!!!!!
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
Wow, they carry guns!?!
I work in a tiny rural hospital and we don't even have a security person.
Yup! They carried guns. I was so glad I was off the weekend of Memorial Day holiday, I think it was, (this was a few years ago) because a patient who came into the ER started acting up causing trouble, grabbed one of their guns (don't know how that happened) and was brandishing it around and threatening everyone down in the ER bay. One of the city police officers who responded to the ERs call for help shot the patient dead. It was a terrible situation. All over the paper and the news.
Sometimes security guards aren't that highly trained. I've heard of their guns getting taken away before. I'm sure there will be an investigation about this incident.
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
Infact we just instituted a new no smoking policy if the pt is caught smoking get the security guy and the nurse and security go over paperwork stating how dangerous it is to smoke in the hosptal for themselves and other pts and explained the o2 in the walls that can explode if they smoke and that pt has to sign the document with the staff.
A couple of years ago in a V.A. hospital where I was working there was a confused smoker on oxygen that somehow got a hold of his cigarettes and lighter after the nurses had taken it away several times. He lit up and flames shot out from the nasal prongs in his nose immediately. Two nurses were walking by the room at the same time and smothered the fired out and turned off the oxygen. He had second degree burns on his nose and lips. He was very alert and oriented for about 2 hours and told his story over and over. Then his confusion came back and he was yelling for his cigarettes again and had no clue as to why his nose and lips were sore. True story.
I was nice about it, of course, but I felt SO empowered........an hour or so later, when his BP crashed, I was really glad I didn't have to wade through 15 people in order to bump up the drip and get him into Trendelenburg!! 
mysticalwaters1
350 Posts
ooops sorry at that time NOT bipap it was a NRB mask at THAT point.